


It's Soup!

by Donotquestionme



Series: No Separation AU [1]
Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Cannibalism, Gore, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22617124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donotquestionme/pseuds/Donotquestionme
Summary: Eddie and his Other have an awful craving for something they can't place.Spoiler: it's not soup.
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Series: No Separation AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1628989
Comments: 13
Kudos: 47
Collections: SYMBRUARY





	It's Soup!

I am hungry.

Not the kind of hungry where it hurts your stomach; the kind of hungry that hurts all over. The kind of hungry that makes looking at food make you feel sick. That eating doesn’t help. That makes all food look and taste foul. Because it’s a specific hunger. A craving for something. 

Yes, that’s it. A craving. One I can feel in my bones, my teeth.

_Our_ teeth. 

But for something I can’t define. I can’t find. I’ll have to keep looking.

I am angry.

But that’s nothing new. Every day I feel like I’m angrier, but everyday it feels more justified, so I don’t mind. Every day I see more filth, more corruption, more sin. Everyday it seems like there’s fewer innocents to protect. Like there’s less and less untouched by the grime and putrescence of this city, this whole society.

What is the world coming to? It disgusts me.

Everything disgusts me now. Food, people,places. The popcorn I’d purchased with something approaching optimism is already all but discarded. Like trying to force mud and gravel down my throat. Repulsive. Like everything else. Everything sets a bad taste in my mouth, like sewage.

Well, except for one thing, of course.

The Other winds itself through my fingers, forming a hand to interlace with mine. 

_My_ Other. 

It’s the only thing that soothes the anger, the shaking, buzzing, craving, wanting, needing. It’s a cool balm. When I feel its presence in my mind, winding its way through the twists and turns of my body, making its serpentine journey through the labyrinth of my form, for a moment I can feel at peace. We can feel at peace. 

There is a movie playing, here in the dark theater. Noise and light that my brain finds too hard to bother parsing. I didn’t come here to watch it, anyway. What story could any human mind fabricate that could match the magnificence of the creature that weaves its way through my cells? 

None. Of course not. But the theater is blessedly dark and any within would not be looking at us. So we are afforded this small luxury of clasped hands. 

In these brief moments such as this, when our minds touch and my heart swells with adoration for my beloved being from beyond the stars, it feels for a moment like there is more to existence than the wretchedness the world seems so filled with. That there is something else to be felt but disdain, disgust. 

Then the shouting begins. 

“Aw, they shoulda got Stallone!” 

Teenagers. 

I always had a soft spot for kids, but nowadays it seems there’s little to be soft for. Even children are tainted by corruption and filth. There’s no respect, no courtesy. These punks are nearly too far gone, already adults, raised in putrid bile and fit to do no more than regurgitate it. 

But maybe not too old and far gone, yet, to be taught a decent lesson.

\--

I am hungry.

I am angry.

Strung up from the ceiling, upside-down, the little cretins' whines and whimpers are giving us a headache. 

**“** **_Punks_ ** **like you make me mad,”** I hiss, wrapped up in my Other, in my true form, _our_ true form. 

Being together, as Venom, feels right. It always does. Like taking off an uncomfortable costume and letting the world see you as you are. Like finally fitting right in your own skin. But the buzzing and churning in my mind only seems to get worse together. 

The only thing that feels right, but also wrong. Helping and hurting. Bane and balm.

Our headache is getting worse. 

**“Mad enough to** **_bite your heads off!”_ **I threaten. 

It’s an old bit, but it’s our standard. Something about a brain-eating alien always seemed fitting. It’s the kind of thing people expect from us. The kind of monster they want us to be.

**“Crrrr** ** _UNCH!_ ** **”** For a moment I can almost picture it. I can almost feel that satisfying crunch of bone between my fangs, cracking and crumbling like the shell of an egg, revealing the precious contents within.

**“Slurp down your brains like big fistfuls of Jello…”**

I can picture that, too. Soft, slippery texture, zapping with the last sparks of life. Tingling against our tongue like a popping candy. Sliding down our throat like a rich pudding. Being so hungry for so long, it almost seems...kind of nice. 

I stretch my jaws around his head, just to spook him, of course. His increased whimpering tells me it’s working. My tongue curls around his chin, as if I’m really tasting, preparing.

**“Yeaaaahhhh…”** I breathe, more reverent than threatening,now. More focused on the image in my mind, on solidifying it, indulging it that fantasy, than really teaching these kids a lesson. And why not? Not like they’d learn anyway. I can feel my Other almost basking in the imagined scenario as well. **“Barely** **_touched_ ** **that crummy popcorn, I could** **_really_ ** **sink my** **_teeth_ ** **into--”**

I stop, abruptly.

I realize my teeth are almost itching with the desire to truly sink into the punk’s flesh. My jaw tightened and primed to bite down with a crushing force. My tongue is drawing in and savoring the taste of fear, of adrenaline, in the teenager’s sweat. 

I _could_ really…

I pull back quickly, returning our jaws to a more normal size and shape. The kid was spooked enough. No need to keep the bit going.

“Uh. Nah,” I say, suddenly at a loss for a witty parting line. 

We release the kids and depart quickly. Suddenly, and unplaceably, the situation feels wrong, almost dangerous. Not that we’re fleeing from it. Not that anything would have happened.

I just get a little carried away sometimes.

It’s the job stress.

\---

I am hungry.

I am _angry._

More angry than hungry now, I feel. Like the hunger has settled into my bones, like it’s a part of me. A dull ache for something I can’t place. We’re out looking for it now. Searching, stalking. Scenting the air, sifting through sensations, discarding everything that’s not right but _nothing is right._

No one understands it. No one understands us. No one ever has and yet strangers think that they have the right to presume what _we_ need. The interaction with the man at the kiosk is still boiling in my blood. 

How can he, someone who could not _possibly_ know us, could not _possibly_ understand us, think he can claim to know what’s good for _our_ health? What _we_ should eat? What _we_ should do? We don’t need his advice! Nor his pity. 

I feel suddenly scrutinized. Like every face on the street is watching us, judging us, trying to find the filth and disease in us, too. Trying to see how their poison has sunk into us, too. 

I’m looking for something now. I feel something like a panic, a desperation. There has to be something that’s right. There must be something that tastes right, feels right. I’m looking for it, now. I feel like I’m wandering a maze. A mouse trying to follow the scent of cheese through walls that are shifting around it. Searching endlessly for a prize that always eludes it.

I need to blow off some steam.

\---

I have to hand it to this biker scum.

He packs a punch. More than I’d expected looking at him, anyway. 

He’s also brutal. Slamming his fists and feet against my skull, my ribs, my spine. He keeps screaming about killing me for trashing his bike and I’m fairly certain that if I were a ‘factory original’ human, he’d be well on his way to succeeding. Even with my Other reinforcing them, I think I can feel my bones cracking. 

The pain is grounding, though. It feels sharp and real when everything else has been cloudy, drowned out by the frantic buzzing of my body and mind. The rush of adrenaline feels good and I find I need more of it. 

As I’m thrown through a window, I can already feel my Other cording itself through my bones, sealing any crack, repairing any fracture. It seeps up through my skin and releases its cloth disguise to wrap around and through me. Our fangs push up through our gums and back into their rightful place. Our jaw stretches and lengthens to accommodate and I find myself wishing I could feel the strain of it more acutely. 

I let our long tongue roll out of our mouth and splash into a mug of beer on the table closest to the window through which we were so recently defenestrated. I do so enjoy a dramatic entrance. Or, reenterence, as the case may be. The taste,however, is even more abhorrent than everything else I’d been fruitlessly trying to consume lately. Pure poison. 

I retch, pulling our tongue back and away from the putrid substance.

**“You call this beer?”** I snarl. **“Tastes more like runny buffalo** **_spit._ ** **Not that** **_scum_ ** **like you deserve any better.”**

Our form feels strange somehow. Fitting to the state of our mind more closely than to the curvature of my body. Bigger, but less defined. More animalistic. More tendrils than we’re used to, as well. Somehow it feels like it matches the disjointed and detached state of my thoughts. Poetic. 

I hear the bikers say something about superheroes, causal slurs and offensive epithets peppered in as is the wont of such ruffians. But we don’t feel like a hero tonight. This doesn’t feel like defending the innocent. I wonder if there’s even any left out there to defend? We don’t even feel like a judge, doling out retribution to the guilty. We’re out picking fights. Finding people who ‘deserve it’, whatever ‘it’ may be. Less like a punisher, more like a predator. 

With teeth to match.

We’re slashing through biker creeps like we were made for it. _Because_ we were made for it. But I barely hear it. Barely notice my own comebacks. I’m spouting the truth, the truth about their bile and filth, and the energy behind it feels good, feels like _something_ , but it’s hollow. It’s not enough. I can’t find it in me to care. I’m angry that I don’t care.

I’m angry.

And I’m _hungry._

God help me, I’m so hungry. 

‘Frankie’,as it seems the leader of this loathsome bunch is named, takes another swipe at me with a knife. As if it could do anything. Ranting about cutting me open, as if he isn’t hopelessly, pitifully outmatched. 

I swat him away like the disgusting insect he is.

**“Oh, bite me.”**

I’m not sure if I mean to kill him, but the loud ‘crack’ of his head against the brick pillar suggests that such a feat has no doubt been accomplished. 

Suddenly I have no space in my mind for considering it. No space for thought about the other bikers starting to peel themselves off the floor. 

A scent wafts into our nose, permeates into our flesh, into the scent detecting cells that litter the Other’s body, when we wish them to.

And suddenly, we desperately wish them to. 

I sniff again, then once more, as the Other floods our form with more and more structures dedicated to scent, lining our skin with them so that the intoxicating aroma caresses us like a warm breeze. 

What _is_ that?

**“Something...smells...** **_GOOD,”_ **I murmur, like a man possessed. 

I feel like a man possessed. Possessed by that smell, the need for more of it, the need to discern its source. Our mouth is watering (more so than normal, anyway) and suddenly the hollow ache of craving turns sharp and demanding in our gut. I feel myself willing more teeth into our mouth and I feel my Other enthusiastically fulfilling that wish. 

My Other is practically writhing on my skin. Our form feels like it’s shivering down to the core.

What is it? _What_ _is it?_

I stalk to the pillar, stained with thick, red liquid, and breathe in that scent as deep as my lungs will allow.

**“Warm ’n mushy…”** I find myself repeating the words from earlier. When I had so desperately been trying to define what our body was screaming for. To put words to its silent but insistent demands. “ **Wet...and...tingly…”**

I lean down right above the cracked and bloodied cranium of the late Frankie, sniffing again and confirming beyond a doubt the source of the mouthwatering scent. And confirming beyond a doubt that it’s what we’ve been craving. What we need. What we _want._

**“** **_Mmmmmmmm…”_ **the moan from our lips is nearly sinful. It’s so close. What we’ve needed so painfully. What we’ve been aching for.

I feel feverish and desperate. The Other is writhing around and inside me. Our combined want and need feels like it will shake our body apart.

The Other provides me a lie before I even realize I have been begging it for one. Something innocuous. Something, anything appropriate. Excusable. It pushes me forward, encouraging. It feels as frenzied as I do.

**“It’s...** **_soup!”_ **I exclaim. 

And with that it’s justified. It’s acceptable. It’s accepted.

It’s inevitable. 

We open our jaws wide, tongue lolling out.

**“** **_Yeahhhhhhh…”_ **we breathe.

Our jaws snap down, crunching through the ~~skull~~ **soup**. The moment it hits our tongue is like salvation. After months of wanting, craving, aching, the thing we’ve so desperately needed is here, dancing on our taste buds, sliding down our throat. Like water in a desert, like life returning to our body. The relief is so sweet, so potent, I feel like weeping.

How could we stop?

Our teeth gnash and tear, dragging more and more of the precious substance into our mouth. It’s so much and yet not enough. How can it be both? How can it be everything and yet nearly nothing? 

We can’t understand it. Can’t understand anything. Can feel nothing, think of nothing, but the need for more. _More._ Like a thousand pounds would not be enough. 

Faintly, as if beyond the veil of a dream, we can hear it, a cry of pure horror and disgust.

“I don’t believe it!” a voice cries. _“He’s eatin’ Frankie’s brains!”_

The statement drags me out of my frenzied state as if dragging me out of thick molasses.

**“...what?”** I mumble, still feeling only half lucid. 

No...no we never….we _would_ never. It wasn’t...it was only…

I look down at my hands, stained with blood and chunks of grey matter. 

**“No…”** I breathe, then scream. **_"NO!"_**

It couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be real. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t us. Wasn’t Venom!

Suddenly Venom becomes a divided entity, split jaggedly between the horror and disgust at the viscera coating our claws and the frantic desire to lick each one clean of it. The revulsion at what we’ve done and the desperation to continue. 

I stumble backwards.

**“Threatened plenty of times -- never meant to -- just to scare ‘em...a** **_joke_ ** **!”** I stammer. 

When had it stopped being an empty threat? When had it stopped being a bit? A Joke? 

Dear God, had it ever really been?

My stomach churns. Suddenly I feel panicked. Exposed like a rat in a trap, overcome with the need to escape.

**“Something’s** **_wrong_ ** **with -- Oh** **_God_ ** **have to-- Get away!”**

I flee as fast as our legs will carry me, away from the cooling, clotting remains of what is decidedly not soup.

And the worst thing.

The _worst_ thing.

Is that _I’m still hungry_. 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the day 8 Symbruary prompt: Food
> 
> I wrote this in like 2 hours and only because my dog keeps screaming at me to take him on a walk so I can't focus. I've never written in present tense and very rarely in first person so forgive any flaws. Not beta or proofread. 
> 
> POV Oneshot of select scenes from The Hunger. What would one call that? A rewrite? A fic-i-zation? I do not know. 
> 
> Requires that you had read Venom: The Hunger (aka the good The Hunger) to really make any sense.


End file.
